School specific accounts are being used as a platform for students to share their experiences — mostly partying and posing in various states of undress. Photos are usually submitted to an admin who saves the photos and uploads them to the public Snapchat Story.

Officials at some universities started to take notice after repeated images containing nudity, illegal drug use and alcohol use appeared.

Iowa State student Erin Malloy says there was was no stopping the account once it began. She says although there were no specific guidelines for what was posted, the majority of the photos and videos published were of drugs and nudity.

“When the accounts were being shut down, students were confused because it wasn’t clear who was doing it,” Malloy says. “Students wondered if the police or university officials were behind it, but technically any Snapchat user can report an account.”

Snapchat states that any violation of its guidelines can “result in the removal of content, the suspension of your account and being prohibited from using Snapchat in the future.”

That doesn’t make it easy for law enforcement or campuses to use the photos as evidence.

Chris Sutton, administrative lieutenant for the ECU police, says that just because users in photos may be wearing campus apparel, it doesn’t necessarily tie them to the university as a student. He says that through their monitoring of the account, there has yet to be a time where he could verify a student and a location.

“Without actually being able to analyze a powdery substance, all you have is a photo of some powder, or even a pill,” Sutton says. It’s difficult to assess the validity of the actual substance abuse.”

The legal concerns arise from — among other issues — violations of Snapchat guidelines.

Photos containing nudity, for example, are often illegal and classified as sharing pornography according to Snapchat’s community guidelines. Images of users explicitly partaking in illegal drug use are also prohibited.

Certain types of content can go against university guidelines, which happened at UCLA.

Erin Donnelly reported in The Daily Bruinthat “recording someone or sharing sexually explicit photos without clear consent is also against the UCLA Student Conduct Code.”

East Carolina University senior and psychology major Jessica Carver is mostly concerned about the perception the accounts place on the university.

“Sex and drugs happen at every university, but it’s not the first thing you think of,” she says. “That’s the first thing people think of ECU because it’s being blasted to the public.”

Sutton agrees that it presents the institution with reputation issue, but says that it is hard to decipher if the people in the photos are true ECU students. Still, he cautions students to use discretion in what they submit.

“I think the people are not aware of what the effects of it may have, from an institutional standpoint, what negative attachment there can be,” he says.

A designated Twitter account — like the one shown below — for most of the accounts post updates on when accounts are shut down and what replica accounts are created.

At ECU, the founders use a specific app available in the Apple Store as a permanent back up.

Despite state laws, university policies and Snapchat terms of service, the accounts don’t appear to be going anywhere.

“While a lot of the popularity obviously comes from the lewd nature of the content, I think there’s a certain local appeal to it,” Malloy says. “It’s more intriguing knowing it is likely people from your campus sharing these clips.”​

Kaitlyn Russell is a student at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and a spring 2015 USA TODAY Collegiate Correspondent.